Police and municipal authorities in Orange County, California, claim they have now been able to solve the murders, which took place more than 30 years after two women were found dead in separate incidents. Following an ongoing investigation by the district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s office, which specifically used the latter’s investigative genealogy unit, DNA evidence established that the same man was responsible for both homicides.
Reuben J. Smith, a former resident of Las Vegas, Nevada, was first mentioned as a suspect in Shannon Rose Lloyd and Renee Cuevas’ killings in 1987 and 1989 last year. The women were killed in Garden Grove, an Orange County city located between Anaheim and Santa Ana, at the ages of 23 and 27, respectively.
According to the Garden Grove Police Department, Smith was detained in Las Vegas in 1998 for sexual assault and attempted murder against a different lady. The following year, Smith committed suicide.
DNA profiles acquired from the crime scenes were matched with evidence gathered following Smith’s arrest, twenty years after the Orange County Crime Lab originally connected Lloyd and Cuevas’ deaths. All three samples matched, as per Garden Grove PD.
On May 21, 1987, a corpse was found inside the Garden Grove bedroom Lloyd was renting at the time. The cause of her death was strangling, and a subsequent autopsy revealed that she had been sexually violated. Cuevas was discovered by the side of the road on February 19, 1989, which was nearly two years later.